In the eating disorder outpatient program I participated in I gained 20 lbs over the 8 weeks I was there. I did not feel better about myself after this. I didn’t just “accept my body as it was” as they told me I should. I had not recovered from my eating disorder, and the way they were telling me to eat was just making me gain weight, especially because it hadn’t helped with the bingeing. To be a nutritionist who specializes in eating disorders takes YEARS. And everyone I asked said that I needed to stop focusing on the weight I was gaining and instead focus on recovery. But each time I noticed my clothes getting tighter and my body getting bigger, the more defeated I felt. When I would ask for help the most anyone could tell me was “go out and get ice cream every once and a while” and “each meal you should have a starch, protein, fat, fruit/vegetable and dairy and you should eat two snacks during the day”. This wasn’t helping my binge habits, and was making me gain weight. I needed a little more assistance than that. So I want to share with you all what I did to both lose weight and recover. In fact, contrary to what I was being told, when I finally began to lose weight it was only MORE motivation to recover.